They are winning because ukn is miles ahead all the other teams in CTF, there’s no comparison. Still, they are getting pretty close scores. I think they haven’t got to their peak yet, that's what i meant.

(1) They are playing with tox, who isn't exactly a CTF superstar.
(2) They aren't playing with a stable line-up, switching between ph0enx, zyrinx, and tg. Their matches with zyrinx are much better than those with tg. Did you consider that in your analysis?
(3) I agree that this probably isn't their peak yet, but it's very unlikely that an European team will pass them.

(4) There's still time to Quakecon. They are already the best CTF team in Europe. Your summary stating their "not doing that good" is rather misleading.

Is it even confirmed that spart1e will be averagers' dueller?
Fazz said on his stream that he, spart1e and noctis (dem0n said he didn't wanna play duel) will decide based on which team they play and who feels good on the day.

And a bunch of fat people standing in line at a hotel isn't a hype video.

In my eyes there's no clear favourite for any team mode anymore and I would give really good chances to unknown in both CTF & TDM.

102's dominance in tdm in the past years is solely based upon the fun prague lan where their only threat was 4oldmen who weren't exactly going there hardcore for the win (as opposed to the russians) - and it was still a rather close game if I remember correctly.

The same happens in CTF - in my eyes but I can be wrong, dahang's team is the more favourite of the two NA ones because of their current stability but even then I saw rapha's team giving a good shake to BREAK with the freshly acquired sparks in their team and they were visibly still working on the chemistry together.

Also other interesting thoughts that you need to think about : the us teams have completely shuffled from last year (team 2014 : dahang zero4 whaz br1ck / team welp : rapha cl0ck id_ psygib) with br1ck making it out and kgb + viju back in the mix. Last year, unknown put up a strong fight vs the US teams with gerppa instead of tox (they lost on OT on new cerberon and almost tied it on cp9 vs the eventual winners, that was pretty close). And I like and respect gerppa's ctf skills but tox's aim, on lan ?

Now these are all speculations today to say who's favourite and who's not but people tend to make everything simplier than it all really is tbh :). Let's just be happy that (almost) every team has started preparation early and this is possibly the most stacked quakecon lan ever when it comes to teams attending :).

I've been practising and analysing a lot of stuff lately. Not to mention the experience I have from last year... I know what I'm talking about and saying anyone could win isn't me trying to hype stuff. There's still two months to go and every team has already started practising for about a month now. I think I just have an easier time at seeing the potential of any team than people reviewing it all from the outside.

Watch out for iG aswell as they could prove a pain in the ass if they reach their full potential.

EDIT : In case you didn't realize I still would call Break favourites in CTF and 102 in TDM but potentially I think a few other teams can surpass them.

There's a very good chance you/ukn could beat 102 into 1st place in TDM. Americans can't.
Don't see anyone beating BtC in CTF though.

iG pretty much no chance for either. They got raped into depression by ukn & DM a couple weeks ago & haven't practiced together since (unless both silencep & clawz play with fake nicks). Considering all the higher teams are playing a couple times a week together atm I don't see them catching up, especially with no dm20

I agree for the most part.
Such difference modes require different skills and personalities, so the variance of this QCon will be much higher that what it usually is.
Deciding where to put your floor and ceiling in terms of potential and skill varies. Same on how to approach the modes you are not best at.
Every map counts in this format, lesset teams will have a central role they never had in the past QCons and the uncertainity reigns supreme.

Still, i think you can have your favorites tho... While checking the scrims and development of everybody. And it's hella fun!

Reason: While I find the American teams to be more dynamic and really coordinated in both shutting situations down as in creating them, I think Meltdown (Unknown) won't make the same mistakes as last time and become fully prepared to take first place based on individual quality.

Underdogs for me are Skrympy Lingerie and Averagers. I actually hope they do well as they have potential, but I am not sure how high of a priority they have to take first place in this mode.

TDM: 1. 102 2. Meltdown 3. Averagers

Reason: Basically a team play vs individual quality dilemma. I think 102 has the best balance of both and I am pretty sure they will take the TDM part of the tournament extremely seriously. Meltdown simply has the best individual quality in this mode as well, so any map that supports being able to aim your way out, they will take it.

Averagers I hope they do well, as I find noctis the best all-round TDM-er because he's really consistent and can turn games around without choking in the difficult situations.

Duel: 1. Cypher 2. DaHanG 3. Cooller

Reason: Out of all duelers I think Cypher is able to focus entirely on duel. Other players have teams that require a lot of effort in the other modes to reach that first place. DaHanG is always placed high and is very consistent in his play style (defensive and strategic). Cooller will place high, but I think he will be countered by the top 2 players.

I left rapha out, because I think he will put all his effort in CTF due to the competitive nature of his team and will rely on his experience in duel.

...

Overall I think it will be a nice display of Quake Live being played at a high level. You have a great mix of heavy hitters and strategically set players. Will certainly watch all games if I get the chance and the stream works properly.

Apart from their losses against MD, Team Averagers are playing very well by now. They win most maps against very good mixteams. I don't think that Skyrmpy will be much better than some of the best European mixteams, and they are definitely not near the level of MD.

Pretty much the same goes for 102. They are getting good results against everyone but Meldtown, I think they have made good progress. Russians are scary on LAN, you'll see.

As for iG, they really haven't played much CTF yet, and I imagine that communication is a big issue for them. In any case, they might not even need to accomplish that much. I feel like they might be trying to achieve ~2nd place in TDM, and if cypher wins duel, then a ~6th place finish in CTF can be enough for them to get the overall championship.

Ah yes, QuakeCon. That time of the year when 50 or so players play QL for only two weeks out of the whole year but then never contribute to or do anything to revitalize the community in between. Go get em.

Too bad zero4 isn't playing duel but you can't argue with dahang being their duel pick.
edit>> OK so z4 isn't on dahang's team anymore. rapha is. Teams change so fast it'll make your head spin. Same comment though, just substitute rapha..

Based on the road2qcon tournament we saw i think it’s safe to say that EU teams, in terms of CTF, are mediocre at best. So MD will get a surprise facing BREAK, as they are way better than all the teams they are playing right now.

But yea, it's pretty obvious at this point that the final will be between MD and BREAK.

I dunno what games you guys have been watching but MD & avg both are looking to be in top form and have been playing eachother every day. Mean while all the drama and roster changes have hurt BREAK as they really have nobody to play so they have resorted to playing mixed pugs and lesser skilled teams when practicing. So BREAK winning by 3+ caps just about every game isn't nesasarly due to their overwhelming dominance but due to there not being any strong opposition in NA. The MD/Avg tend to be closer as the both are very strong teams who have been scrimming eachother regularly and each team being formilar with the others strats. As it sits now I would say

CTF

1) MD
2) BREAK/Avg
3) BREAK/Avg

TDM

Anyone of MD, 102, Avg can win and each should find themselves in the top 3.

Indeed, Sparks / Whaz shitty drama did hurt the scene pretty badly, now the two top teams (BREAK and rapha’s) are not playing against each other anymore and that will for sure affect their preparation for the tournament. They must be super mad or something.

I think MD showed yesterday that when they take it serious avg is not even remotely close to them.

They aren't mad at each other, it's part of rapha's team's strategy to not play BREAK so as to not give them any hints about their play style or strategy. They're basically trying to use it as a competitive advantage.

Considering there's a >50% chance that they won't even play against each other in a given game mode, I'm doubtful it's such a good idea not to practice against basically the only good opponent they've had for the last few weeks.

But the two best duel players how are determined? Everyone in evey group plays everyone else, and who accumulate more points individually is considered the best?

Or are the 4 players of a group battling others groups, and the best player of every group is determined internally? That would mean that only the two groups with the relatively best 4 duelers would pick a dueler for the duel grand final; which would mean, Tox and Cooller or Spartie, probably.

someone like Rapha wouldn't have a chance to try the duel grand final.

Most likely there will be 16 teams, there's one missing here which is the team that "exitu5" is playing for (zoot confirmed that he's going) and the other team will probably be 4saken, but i don't know.

Ironsights, headshots, and increased movement speed with gauntlet out will now be part of the default gameplay. Along with that, they will be introducing health regen to streamline gameplay. Like universal ammo packs, who has time to go around and pick up individual/specific ammo boxes or hp bubbles.

Guys i've got to say I'm pleasantly surprised. Specifically the casting - exaggerated ooh and wows, fake sounding hype, competition for speaking time, general nervousness and the likes - is usually a major nuisance for me. Especially when I get a feeling that a stream seems to be more about the casters than the games. But zoot and jehar interact really nicely here, in a very laid back and relaxed fashion. Like it. Very much.

well i'm glad they did anything at all tbh and it isn't making it worse. it seems to be better than the old one.it might sound weird but looking at past years of id's work you could expect downgrades only.

its always like this, year after year, its a tournament for players, spectators r not so important, e.g. just one game per round, plus long breaks and no content in between. When u look at the official quakecon page, lots of volunteers, which equals lower production value.

He seems to think tox, linkin and winz are the stars of the team and zyrinx is some random so while zyrinx was destroying avengers he kept reiterating how he was "not flashy" just "always staying alive, hard to kill" etc. If it was toxic making those frags he would have been rattling down all the superlatives.

i have a fix, you need to load the VOD from the start and manualy go at the time mark you want, if you use a link with timestamps in URL it will not work, you need delet timestamps in url and load page again.

this happens since the massive Flashplayer leak and hack 2 or 3 weeks ago.

They got to give me something today, to mend that broken heart. Like this.

Put on the war paint and gather together in a circle, hold each other firm at the shoulders. Then remind themselves that this is the day, to jointly and honorably live or die together. There will be no other one. Never. Then speak those shamanic words, that will bring the force upon them. And then go and wipe those smug grins off those little dwarfs faces.

Show them those teeth, that will soon rip through their flesh. Make them weep and moan and suffer, and beg for mercy. And curse the day that they were born.

No teamspeak will be needed. Their bodies and minds will be one, in perfect harmony. They will grab the flag but never think of scoring. Instead, they will fly through the map enjoying the cool breeze, handing the flag to each other while waving it at those angry little dwarfs. And while those try to chase them, they will easily brush them aside with gentle strokes of their shafts and playful stings of their rails.

Only randomly will they come through their base and realize: "oh yes, I remember this is my base, I might just as well score." And this is how they're going to make their points. And in the end they will come out of the game feeling refreshed like never before.

One map, minimum. And I will go to bed tonight with a blissful smile on my face.

On the last map of 102 vs md, when 102 lost control of quad and the pu's were offset wouldn't basic strategy be to then split up around the map, forgot about trying to win the body suit and just try to minimize frags against.? If you spread out and just report where the pu's are you might not give up too many frags right? It has to be better than just dropping in the body suit room and getting destroyed by quad and the rest of md

IDK man, when the quad is like 20 secs before BATTLE suit, there's really no chance of getting the BS. Both time IIRC, 102 guys dropped in the BS room trying to steal it I guess. And both time's they were all destroyed by a room full of MD and quad. I could be remembering it wrong though.

But if they just let the suit be taken then they got 10 secs of quad and 30 secs of BS. If they just kind of spread out, take weapons and items as they can and report where the BS is, they might have died less. And they only lost by like 9 frags.

Yeah that's cool to watch for sure but they're not trying that shit against MD with a bunch of 40%+ lg and 65%+ rg pros plus a guy with quad all camping the room.

EDIT: Ok I just watched again and the quad zyrinx got, I can understand them try to steal the bs after I guess (didn't work out but..) But the one after that they might have stayed away. Then after they lost the BS too, they all grouped together by the lg jump pad and just got mowed down. Grouping togther like that made it easy for the quad guy to get a couple more kills.

IDK, seems like they could have won but made some bad decisions towards the end. gg though. Even if they avoided all the kills I just mentioned they still would have lost by a couple.

I'd like to expand regarding the format: there were 3 massive flaws that simply made this tournament a joke.

1st- the tiebreakers are REtarded.
I've partecipated in many swiss tournaments in different games and the tiebreakers were always based on the record of your opponents, then in a minor part on what, in quake, are frags difference\maps won in total.

With the current system, if you start 0-1 and you get to play lesser opponents all the way through you will have an unfair advantage in the end, because you have a match higher chance to steal maps against a 0-1 then a 0-2 and then again 1-2 opponent.
Meanwhile a team winning the first round will play vs a 1-0, 2-0 and 2-1 opponent, face stronger enemies and get behind because they got less maps vs vastly superior teams.

With the tiebreaking system based on the opponents' record, this largely unfair advantage is denied, because your tiebreaker rating will plummet by playing other bad teams.

This is exactly what happened to IG (and a bit to FEm, but you know, karma maybe? :D). They started 2-0 and then got paired vs 2 strong teams and lost all the following maps.
On the other side, the LOLChileans got rekt and mercylimited 3x by their only decent opponent and then just got easier competition that led to a 1 map victory in defeat and an undeserved 6th place.

2nd-The LMAO way to pair the 1st seed with the 9th and the 8th with the 16th. This not only set up the tone of everything to a massive fuckup from the getgo, giving massive tiebreaking advantage pretty much randomly. Hell this is fucking why you have seedings, to preserve the competitive integrity of the tournament! How can you fuck this up from the fucking start?
This is so retarded i don't even need to explain this point any further.

3rd- they both caused the 4th round fuckup between the 2-1 teams that led Anything is Possible to an undeserved 3-1 scoreline.

the 2-1 teams after 2 rounds were: AVG, IG, Break, FEm, Zorak and Anything is possible.
Zorak and Anything is possible had the worse tiebreakers in any possible way: worse maps difference, frags difference and they both lost BO3 against 1 of the other 2-1s.
They are the two lowest 2-1s.
And yet they fucking get paired against eachother!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(I'll try to replicate what happened exactly and how this epic fuckup happened in my next post)

I'll close with this:
Anything is possible opponents as the 7th seed: 15th seed, 3rd seed, 11th seed 12th seed. And they somehow place 5th in TDM

this were the standing after 3 rounds of the teams we are interested in (2wins, 1 loss):

3rd IG
4th AVG
5th Break
6th FEm
7th Zorak

8th Anything is possible

One crucial detail: Anything is possible has 1 point less (1 map loss to Chile) than the others, so they are not tied for third place!!!!

The tiebreakers for the others (all tied at 10 points): 1-Round won vs opponents with the same scores. 2-frags difference.

So IG won 1 round vs Zorak, that gives them the 3rd place and gives Zorak the 7th. The others are lined up accordingly.

The fuckup: The team paired down is the team with the lower position. But this is not a real pair down because the fucking 8th seed is 2-1 as well in matches! So Zorak gets rewarded despite being the worse team out of the ones with 10 points, and Anything is possible gets rewarded despite losing a map.
After this pairing the rest happen.

So IG or FEm were better off losing 1 extra map in their first 3 rounds))))

What should have happened in this round with best possible Rules (proper pairing system, tiebreaker based on strenght of the opponents, no extra points on maps):
3rd AVG - 8th Zorak
4th IG - 7th Anything
5th Break - 6th FEm

It'd be so funny to actually see how badly the 3 wrong qcon rules influence this round. If you change 1 of them back to the qcon rule everything changes. And of course you needed all 3 to get to the most retarded outcome, the one that actually happened in real life :D

2 of those 3 retarded rules also made round 2 particularly badly paired. CBA explaining it right now tho

TL;DR: they paired teams stupidly (1seed vs 9seed, 8vs16 instead of 1vs16 and 8vs9), picked the wrong scoring system (one proper of all play all instad of swiss), the wrong tiebreakers (again, one proper of all play all instead of swis) and paired down the wrong team.
Another epic QCon fail :D

i'll also add: the South Muricans teams gotta hella screwed from the getgo as well.
Because of the stupid pairing system instead of having a chance to upset the medium NA team (who they proved they could beat) they got instapaired vs 102 and Averagers in round 1 LOOOOL

Tbh it seems you greatly misunderstand the swiss system and I dont quite get all this rant. Qcon rules strictly followed it's principles, let me clarify them:
1) The point of such a tournament format(which is pretty much written in any swiss system description) is ONLY to determine who gets the 1st place(and last :D) and that's why the strongest teams play each other and that's why the 1st place gets all the money. You should NOT look at the midtable because there were not enough rounds to form it precisely unlike in round robin tournament which would have taken 4 times more matches. Basically you should look at this tournament like at a Single Elimination tournament but with a great bonus for the weaker teams to actually play more than 1 game.
2) Initial and later pairing(for example initial 1-9,2-10,etc) is one of the main principles of Swiss System(and I never saw the variants you propose tbh) made to minimize the score spread and define the comparison parameters ( Score,TB,Buchholz,Pts Diff http://challonge.com/qc15_trimaster_tdm/standings ) to declare a winner. Cause two 3-0 teams might have not happened so that you'd have needed to look at the points. And also for example MD and 102 raping the worst teams as you propose with 200+ fragdifference on a single map would have totally broken those parameters(which luckily werent even needed today)

The only 'random' thing might be the overall tdm+ctf+duel winner, but that's most likely not gonna be the case with MD or BREAK taking it quite convincingly

i agree with you, but he's making valid points tho, specially the one where opponent's ratio should be the main tiebreaker, that seems the logical way. At least we can all agree that the top 4 were fair and accurate and the only way all this could end bad is if either ig or fem make big wins in the next tournaments but end getting f*ed because of the flawed tiebreakers which affected them in the tdm tournament ... let's just hope that doesn't happen :P

the bad pairing system can have a massive influence in the final round of the final day between the two top teams:
MD and Break are tied or very close going into duel (which is very possible).
Tox does slightly worse (wins 3-0, wins 2-1, loses 0-3) than DaHang (wins 3-0, Wins 3-0, Loses 1-2):
-> DaHang gets paired up agaist another with 11 points or the best with 10 points, most likely another top5 (Like an Evil\Cooller\Raffer) kinda player, gets punished for gunning for having better results.
-> Tox gets paired down against who's probably a tier2\3 player with 8 or 9 points (like a chance, DKT), or the "worse" tier1\2 player with 10 points (Like a Fazz\Spart1e).

DaHang Loses 3-0 stays at 11
Tox wins 3-0 goes up to 14

-> MD wins it overall because lolrules.

this is just an example not that far off of what could happen probably, who knows how many fuckups are possible in the last day with these rules.

1) if the point of such a tournament is only to determine the 1st place, why isn't that the case in this tournament? Who ends up 4th\9th aka wtih 14 or 9 points, has a big impact on who wins the overall money.

2) So the pairing system is wrong because it tries to fix a wrong tiebreaking system.

But even ignoring that: winning by 200 is unlikely, even ignoring that unlikelyness, it's still more accurate overall than having a 600 frag difference between seed 8 and 9 after 1 round, since your overall points matter.
Also it has a direct negative and random impact on the top seeds, this time around it hapened to have the first seed's odds greatly reduced by making them play vs AVG, Break, 102 and the 9th seed: basically they played the other top4 teams and had their odds of winning overall reduced by a pretty big margin compared to 102 who faced lesser opponents out of pure luck.
If i applied the logic to look at this like a single elimination tournament, as the first seed they had to face the 4th\5th strongest team in the Quarters, and the 2nd\3rd in the semis and finals: that's not how tournaments with seeding should work.

Also evenif it won't have an impact overall in the end, that won't validate the integrity of the system but much rather the superior skills of those 2 teams.

last random point of the lols: why would they say stuff like "oh wow team x got 6th and team y got 5th!" at the end broadcast if the format was supposed to be worthless for the middle of the pack teams :DDD

if the point of such a tournament is only to determine the 1st place, why isn't that the case in this tournament?

It's the case for TDM, CTF and duel. Just not for the overall. I think there's money for that just because it would be pretty sad not to have an overall winner in a triple tournament like that. But in the end it means nothing. There are no additional matches for it; it's just money IMO. Well that's just how I see things anyway.

except for 102 in CTF & AVG in 1v1 the main teams all hope they might win the remaining gametypes...no reason to lose on purpose. With MD already on 19 points the odds of tactically beating MD overall by throwing games isn't any better than beating them in 1v1/CTF. Except fighting means you could win $40k instead of $8k

edit: realistically only AVG could throw & win best team...even then it means winning the last 3 games in 1v1

i'm just using an extreme example to better show the flaws of the system. Starting 0-1 is not required to abuse the system.
As i said in the CTF thread: if you are out of the top4 and good at maths you are better off throwing a map or some caps or even a match at the right moment and enjoy a better opponent in round 3\4.

"only"... So one team could win by basically cheating :D ! But it's not true only them.

If MD and Break get close in the end (they will) these rules might have a massive role:

Tox throws or just loses a map early: in the 4th and decisive round, when he's 2-1, he'll get paired against the 7th best dueler (let's say the AVG dueler, who as well lost a map in a match victory) instead of the 3rd best (let's say Evil).

DaHang in the meanwhile won his matches 3-0 3-0 and lost 3-0 he'll get paired up vs the 3rd dueler (let's say Evil, who won 3-0 3-0 and lost 1-2) instead of the 7th. DaHang loses the match, while tox wins.

-> MD gets more points and wins out of a fuckup.

AVG could apply this approach in both CTF and Duel if they feel like they have no shot at the first place.
And who knows with the ruskis and ctf?
Of course the actual "gameplan" is not that linear, you might need to adapt on the fly to abuse it.. But that's not even the point.

The point is that these things might happen by accident moreso than being deliberate as was the case for Anything is Possible..

MD and BREAK are the CTF finalists. It doesn't make sense for either team to throw a CTF game and lose that $8k in the hopes of winning the overall $8k.
It would make even less sense for BREAK to do this as that means MD would have up to 39 points with just duel left

Russians won't throw any CTF games, they'll lose them all honestly :D

Wasn't rapha-DaHang like 4-3? If so DaHang would like his chances of duel and so why risk $24k for $8k. Realistically tox doesn't really have a chance to win duel but I don't think he will see it this way.

If MD go top 2 in CTF & tox throws the first 1v1 2-1 then they win the team game but he loses the chance of the 1v1. If they beat BREAK in the CTF I think they'd be on such a high that tox wouldn't want to throw the 1v1 but instead would want a clean sweep

yet again, it's not only that this system can be abused. It also can be biased in a random way or a loss-rewarding way.
And you don't need to throw a match, if you know what you are doing throwing a map when up 2-0 might be enough to steal points and the overall title.

MD and BREAK don't need to throw matches\games in ctf to get fucked by the system for the overall victory.
As i wrote already: if you are in the top2 or 3 to win a single event that approach doesnt make sense.

Again, regarding your latter points about duel:
This can happen naturally as well, and it actually have a suprisingly big probability to happen. That fuck up can happen just because it happens not because teams try to abuse things. It is actually might be more probable for a fuckup like that to happen if teams DON'T try to abuse things

Teams can try to stack pairings in their favor AFTER they are losing a match 0-2 "naturally" as well, maybe with your teammates being around and checking results of the others live! You can adjust on the fly.

What you describe is known as the 'Swiss gambit' in chess: lose in the early rounds to get weaker opponents later.
Open Swiss chess tournaments tend to run for 9 rounds (and have many participants), the Swiss pairing system does not work well with fewer rounds. That's why sometimes they use 'accelerated Swiss' in tournaments with fewer than 9 rounds. (Keep in mind that these open chess tournaments tend to have way more players than 16, they can run in the hundreds.)

Oh yes, I think dm14 was amazing. Battle suit got delayed quite early on, and the gap between quad and BS just got wider with each PU cycle. Regular quad take-overs from the team that held RA ensued and were executed quite amazingly. It was fun.

And just when you tought qcon couldn't get any worse the come up with this neutral swiss bullshit, i mean seriously wtf....

Only thing remaining to slightly get hyped for is the final but tbh it really feels like why even bother, just have the 3x4 rounds and give everyone a participation medal because this shit is retarded anyway.

And of course they come up with this shit at the worse possible moment when qcon is the only real thing quake has left...
Atleast quad tourney was fun...

Surprised by all the hugs and kisses from jehar on stream I'd like to point everyone's attention to our one and only frs whose giant patience and spectrum of ideas made ragnarok the map it is in the first place. Wasn't just me.. :-)